POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power
  • About
  • Introduction
  • Browse the book
    • All the pages alphabetically >
      • A >
        • Power: Against the Flow, with the Flow
        • Animal power
        • Addiction and power
        • Absolute power
        • Anxiety and power
      • B >
        • Bureaucracy and power
        • Buddhism
        • Binary thinking
      • C >
        • Cause and effect
        • Circumstances and Power
        • Power as a chess game
        • Choice
        • (Power to) change how you see things
        • Choosing meanings
        • Consumerism
        • Corrupted by power
      • D >
        • Discovering your power
      • E >
        • Empowerment
        • Empathy and power
        • (Power to) enjoy the moment
        • Entropy and power
      • F >
        • Foucault's "power is everywhere"
        • Free will
      • G
      • H >
        • Having power and using power
        • Human brain and power
      • I >
        • Intersectionality and power
        • Improving mental abilities
        • (Power to) improve your mood
        • In control
        • Inequality
        • Influencing each other
        • Intentionality and power
      • K >
        • Knowledge and power
      • L >
        • "Power" in language
        • Language has power over us
        • Limited resources
        • Louis XIV and Absolute Power
      • M >
        • Making an effort is a prerequisite of using power
        • Marxism and the meaning of power
        • "May" power
        • Micropower: Individual power
        • Mindfulness
        • Media and Digital Literacy as Forms of Individual Power
        • (Mis)understanding of power in media texts
        • Money and Power
        • My synesthetic perception of "power"
      • N >
        • (Nature) Power of nature
      • O >
        • Power on/off
      • P >
        • Power as ability
        • Power as influence
        • Power vs. powerlessness
        • Physical power
        • Power is not a thing
        • Power of speech
        • Privilege
        • Power of the powerless
      • R >
        • Responsibility, blame and power
      • S >
        • (Power of) seeing
        • Self-awareness and power
        • Snapshot power
        • (Ability and influence in) social and non-social power
        • Socialization and power
        • (Power of) stories
        • Studying power
        • Synonyms of power
      • T >
        • Theory of micro- and macropower
      • U >
        • Using power is rewarding
      • V >
        • Vector power
      • W >
        • What is power?
        • Willpower
    • Completed pages
  • Author
    • My creative process

Circumstances and Power

PAGE IN PROGRESS
What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience! 
I am me and my circumstances
Conditioning

Meanings that we learn are part of our upbringing can be very difficult to challenge. We can consciously decide to ignore them, to overcome them. Yet, when we find ourselves in an emotionally charged situation, these meanings that we learned first will take over.
​This may see like hypocrisy to the outsider, but the person who acts based on the deeper layers of meaning is not hypocritical. It may be very difficult to bring this mismatch up to the person attention. (It might help to start by explaining how this mechanism works).

Power of going beyond your circumstances. First you need to recognize them. It takes enormous effort to go beyond one's circumstances and it often means questioning your actions. We all may have power to potentially go beyond our circumstances, but few people do it in big ways because of how much effort it takes to use this power.
Example: Thomas Jefferson:
https://www.npr.org/2016/04/16/474485626/-most-blessed-of-the-patriarchs-digs-into-thomas-jeffersons-hypocrisy
"SIMON: In the end, how impressed are you by Thomas Jefferson's mind?GORDON-REED: Enormously impressed, enormously impressed. I think to ask the question how could someone who is a slave owner write the Declaration of Independence, you know, how could he own slaves when he did this other thing, how could he know that slavery was wrong, I mean, that's a problem for us. But there were many, many, many more people who didn't think that slavery was wrong. I mean, the real question is how did somebody who grew up the way he grew up - I mean, the story we tell and, you know, of him - his first memory of being handed up on a pillow...
SIMON: The pillow, yeah.
GORDON-REED: ...To an enslaved person, this institution bounded his life. And yet he thought that it was wrong. There were many, many more people who did not think it was wrong and never thought anything at all about it. "

mindset according to Dweck, as described in Unwinding Anxiety (see page 129 and beyond)

free will
​
If you are interested in getting updates about this project (e.g., when new pages are published), please sign up for the newsletter on my main website.

I use AI tools as a kind of writing partner—sometimes to shape drafts, clarify arguments, or explore phrasing. But the ideas, perspectives, and direction are always my own. Every piece here is part of an evolving personal project.
  • About
  • Introduction
  • Browse the book
    • All the pages alphabetically >
      • A >
        • Power: Against the Flow, with the Flow
        • Animal power
        • Addiction and power
        • Absolute power
        • Anxiety and power
      • B >
        • Bureaucracy and power
        • Buddhism
        • Binary thinking
      • C >
        • Cause and effect
        • Circumstances and Power
        • Power as a chess game
        • Choice
        • (Power to) change how you see things
        • Choosing meanings
        • Consumerism
        • Corrupted by power
      • D >
        • Discovering your power
      • E >
        • Empowerment
        • Empathy and power
        • (Power to) enjoy the moment
        • Entropy and power
      • F >
        • Foucault's "power is everywhere"
        • Free will
      • G
      • H >
        • Having power and using power
        • Human brain and power
      • I >
        • Intersectionality and power
        • Improving mental abilities
        • (Power to) improve your mood
        • In control
        • Inequality
        • Influencing each other
        • Intentionality and power
      • K >
        • Knowledge and power
      • L >
        • "Power" in language
        • Language has power over us
        • Limited resources
        • Louis XIV and Absolute Power
      • M >
        • Making an effort is a prerequisite of using power
        • Marxism and the meaning of power
        • "May" power
        • Micropower: Individual power
        • Mindfulness
        • Media and Digital Literacy as Forms of Individual Power
        • (Mis)understanding of power in media texts
        • Money and Power
        • My synesthetic perception of "power"
      • N >
        • (Nature) Power of nature
      • O >
        • Power on/off
      • P >
        • Power as ability
        • Power as influence
        • Power vs. powerlessness
        • Physical power
        • Power is not a thing
        • Power of speech
        • Privilege
        • Power of the powerless
      • R >
        • Responsibility, blame and power
      • S >
        • (Power of) seeing
        • Self-awareness and power
        • Snapshot power
        • (Ability and influence in) social and non-social power
        • Socialization and power
        • (Power of) stories
        • Studying power
        • Synonyms of power
      • T >
        • Theory of micro- and macropower
      • U >
        • Using power is rewarding
      • V >
        • Vector power
      • W >
        • What is power?
        • Willpower
    • Completed pages
  • Author
    • My creative process